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"Couidance you need There is only couised voice denied hiain "The most recent one I killedwas one of yours"

Victor’s alar another by its own decision Never had this happened before A prograhtly into their psyches, as was a stern commandment that permitted murder for just two reasons: in self-defense or when instructed by their maker to kill

"The victim," Victor said "His name?" ‘Allwine They found his corpse inside the city library this ht his breath as he considered the i to learn froot to find it elsewhere, in others"

"Find what?" Victor asked "What I need," said the caller, and then hung up Victor keyed in 69--and discovered that the caller’s phone was blocked for automatic call-back Furious, he slammed down the handset He sensed a setback

CHAPTER 32

for A while after Victor left for the Hands of Mercy, Erika remained in bed, curled in the fetal position that she’d never known in the creation tank She waited to see if her depression would pass or thicken into the darker ement

The flux of her emotional states sometimes seemed to have little relation to the experiences from which they proceeded After sex with Victor, depression always folloithout fail, and understandably; but when it should have ripened into soh her future seemed so bleak that her despondency should have been unshakable, she often shook it off

Reloo with feathers-- / That perches in the soul-- / And sings the tune without the words-- /And never stops at all

The art on Victor’s walls was abstract: oddly juxtaposed blocks of color that looray on black that to Erika seee books of art, and so herself in a single painting by Albert Bierstadt or Childe Hassaht that she is of the New Race, posthuman, improved, superior She is all but impervious to disease She heals rapidly, almost miraculously

Yet when she needs solace, she finds it in the art and music and poetry of the mere humanity that she and her kind are intended to replace

When she has been confused, has felt lost, she’s found clarity and direction in the writings of imperfect humanity And the writers are those of whom Victor would especially disapprove

This puzzles Erika: that a primitive and failed species, infirm humanity, should by its works lift her heart when none of her own kind is able to lift it for her

She would like to discuss this with others of the New Race, but she is concerned that one of them will think her puzzlen, but some view him with such reverential fear that they will interpret her questions as doubts, her doubts as betrayals, and will then in turn betray her to her maker

And so she keeps her questions to herself, for she knows that in a holding tank waits Erika Five

Abed, with the s in the sheets, Erika finds this to be one of the ti toward despair If I shouldn’t be alive / When the Robins come / Give the one in Red Cravat /A Meentle huht have led to others if not for a scrabbling noise under the bed

Throwing back the sheets, she sat up, breath held, listening

As though aware of her reaction, the scrabbler went still--or if not still, at least silent, creeping noithout a sound

Having neither heard nor seen any indication of a rat when she and Victor had returned to the bedroouests, Erika had assu one had been here Or perhaps it had found its way into a wall or a drain and froreat house

Either the ver, quiet witness to the terrible tax Victor placed upon Erika’s right to live

A moment passed, and then a sound issued from elsewhere in the room A short-lived furtive rustle

Shadows veiled the roole bedside lamp could reach

Naked, Erika slipped out of bed and stood, poised and alert

Although her enhanced eyesnight vision of a cat Victor was conducting cross-species experiments these days, but she was not one of the lamp beside an armchair

Before she reached the la on the floor scurry past her Startled, she pulled her left foot back, pivoted on her right, and tried to sight the intruder along the path that instinct told her itto be seen--or at least nothing that she could see--she continued to the reading la that she hoped to find

A clatter in the bathroo knocked over

That door stood ajar Darkness lay beyond She started toward the bathroo to a stop short of the threshold

Because members of the New Race were immune to most diseases and healed rapidly, they were afraid of fewer things than were ordinary huers to fear

Although hard to kill, they were not i been made in contempt of God, they could have no hope of a life after this one Therefore, they feared death

Conversely, many of them feared life because they had no control of their destinies They were indentured servants to Victor, and there was no suain their freedom

They feared life also because they could not surrender it if the burden of serving Victor becareat They had been created with a deeply eainst suicide; so if the void appealed to them, they were denied even that

Here but a step from the bathroom threshold, Erika experienced another kind of fear: of the unknown

That which is abnorht be beautiful in its way Erika, created not by nature but by the hand of man, was a lovely monster but a monster nonetheless

She supposed that monsters should not fear the unknown because, by any reasonable definition, they were part of it Yet a tingle of apprehension traced the contours of her spine

Instinct told her that the rat was not a rat, that instead it was a thing unknown